Due to its focus on people in professional occupations, LinkedIn is often the social network of preference for B-to-B ecommerce companies. With more than 277 million members, it is the world’s largest professional network.
LinkedIn Company Pages, which resemble Facebook Pages, are where merchants can share their most important content, display products, and connect with relevant followers.
Here are 10 ways to leverage Company Pages to grow your B-to-B ecommerce business.
1. Share Relevant Content on a Routine Basis
Sharing content is just as important on your LinkedIn Company Page as on any other social network. Daily posting of relevant content is one of the best ways to gain awareness and stay top-of-mind with customers and prospects.
Share company news, industry articles, thought leadership pieces, and product promotions. Posts appear on your Company Page and in the news feed of each of your followers.
LinkedIn offers these tips for sharing content.
- Keep intros and headlines concise in order to drive higher engagement in the form of comments and shares.
- Develop content that is quick to consume and of high quality so that members will want to share it with their networks.
- Experiment to find the right balance with messages. Consider mixing entertaining and inspirational posts with informative ones.
- Create an editorial calendar but react to newsworthy events. Let your editorial calendar serve as a guide, but be flexible enough to respond to relevant news, topics, and trends as they occur.
- Break up big themes into a series that you can publish at fixed intervals to keep followers looking for new content.
- Include a call to action. According to LinkedIn, content that includes links receive twice as much engagement as those that don’t.
2. Engage Your Employees
Encourage employees to add your company to their personal profiles. By doing so, they automatically become followers and can like, comment on, and share your company updates to help expand your reach.
3. Add Products and Services
Merchants who build out their “Products & Services” page tend to have twice as many company followers, says LinkedIn. Use this page to feature new products and list product categories. You can link each product to your ecommerce website to drive traffic. If you have product-related videos posted on YouTube, include those, as well.
4. Build Showcase Pages
LinkedIn recently introduced a new extension to Company Pages called Showcase Pages, which are dedicated pages for parts of your business you want to highlight, such as product lines or vendor brands. Showcase Pages are designed for building long-term relationships with members who want to follow specific aspects of your business, not for short-term marketing campaigns.
Members can find Showcase Pages through the main Company Page and by using LinkedIn search. Followers, content and updates on a Showcase Page are distinct from those of your Company Page.
5. Engage with Followers
As your Company Page gains followers, find ways to keep them engaged. Questions are a good way to initiate a conversation, and posting quality content will encourage sharing and comments. Monitor your page and respond to comments and questions when appropriate.
6. Include Rich Media
Always include images, YouTube videos, or other forms of rich media with posts. Links to YouTube videos play directly inside the LinkedIn feed and can result in as much as 75 percent more shares.
LinkedIn-owned SlideShare offers a unique way to drive awareness and sharing of your content. Embed SlideShare such as PowerPoint presentations, product guides, whitepapers, and ebooks in your Company Page.
In addition, include a billboard-style header image that represents the company.
7. Monitor, Analyze and Refine Content
Company Pages come with a robust analytics component, which enables you to track page views, reach, engagement, follower demographics and more.
Use page analytics to determine the types of content that resonate with followers and focus on creating more of the same.
8. Sponsor the Best Updates
LinkedIn offers advertising through Sponsored Updates that appear in user’s news feeds. Use ads to boost attention of and engagement with posts you’ve identified as popular through analytics. A detailed user guide is available for companies that want to pursue this option.
9. Link Your Page to Other Channels
Promote your Company Page by linking it to other marketing channels such as email promotions, blogs and your ecommerce website. Add a “Follow” button to your site in order to make it visitor to follow your Company Page.
10. Announce Your Page to Customers and Vendors
Once your page is set up, drive traffic to it with an announcement in a blog post or email newsletter.